Whiting: Faith through adversity leads to children's ministry

On the side of a rocky trail overlooking a meadow of golden grass and a forest of old oaks, Lynn Miller contemplates the beauty of the natural world and the mystery of faith.

This former elementary school teacher and recently ordained minister knows God deep in her bones. But it also is in those very bones that Miller’s faith has been tested in ways most of us can only imagine.

Miller was born with a rare disease that causes her bones to snap like Popsicle sticks. Just pulling on the monkey bars as a kid, her shoulder broke. She’s suffered scores of other breaks, each one screamingly painful. She’s endured dozens of surgeries, so many Miller lost count before she was a senior in high school.

As I run by Miller, I do something I rarely do. I stop to say hi. It’s not because she’s a woman alone, which is more common than you might think in wilderness areas. And it’s not because she’s in a motorized wheelchair, which she is.

It’s because Miller radiates something that is clearly worth sharing.

Miller was born in Florida and was pretty much like her brother and sister until she was 4. Then something happened that set her on a different path than most children.

She fell off her tricycle.

But the little girl didn’t cry out because she had a typical owie. Her hip was broken.

Another time, she stood up at the kitchen table. Her femur broke. At an age when her friends were getting ready for kindergarten, Miller spent six months in a body cast – her first of many.

Today, there is no known cure and there are worse types of OI than Miller’s. Some die before their first birthday. Miller shares the wisdom from her journey of 51 years.

“I’m an extrovert,” she allows, “but I grew up isolated for months at a time.”

She wasn’t allowed to go to recess or P.E. In some ways, she explains, the isolation was worse than the physical pain. At school functions, no one asked her to dance.

She reports that the only grades she made it through without long hospital stays were 1st, 4th and 6th.

“It’s hard to dream when you’re constantly having the rug pulled out from under you. It was hard to enter adulthood feeling empowered. I just wanted to be a normal young person.

“I thought God hated me…and I didn’t like him very much.”

But over time, things mysteriously got better.

At 18, Miller’s family moved to Orange County because of her father’s job change. She enrolled in Saddleback College and thought she’d enter medicine, a world she knew well.

But a horrible accident followed by a series of conflicting events set Miller on a new path.

She was going to class on a rented wheelchair while hers was being fixed when the machine fell apart. Miller smashed into concrete. Her half-way decent hip and leg were shattered.

After a five-month stay at an OI hospital in Los Angeles, she started hearing a voice say she should share her knowledge, her struggles, her faith with children.

The only problem with that plan was that Miller was struggling with her faith – and she didn’t like kids.

If God is so loving, why did she suffer so much. And children?

Well, some kids would ask what was wrong, and then walk away saying, “Ew.” Others would call out, “Look at the midget.”

It had gotten to the point that when Miller went out and saw children, she’d head in the opposite direction.

Then when Miller was in her early 20s, a doctor reported that her heart was surprisingly strong. But the diagnosis came as no surprise to Miller. Instead, it came as a revelation.

Someone had recently prayed that she have a strong heart.

“It put me in a new direction,” Miller explains, speaking of a power surge flowing through her, of hearing laughter and discovering it was her own, of finding Jesus Christ, of being born again.

But being born again didn’t mean a new body. Miller had more struggles ahead.

The voice about helping children grew louder and Miller realized she couldn’t ignore her calling.

“As a result of all I had suffered as a child,” Miller explains, “I have found passion to serve children.”

Miller transferred to UCI where she earned a bachelor’s degree and then a teaching certificate. She taught at private schools, receiving terrific evaluations as a substitute teacher. She was on her way to becoming a public school teacher, or so she thought.

In interview after interview, Miller hit obstacles. How would she handle a classroom full of kids? How could she reach the blackboard?

In her home in Rancho Santa Margarita, Miller offers me coffee and moves into the kitchen using her legs and arms. Soon she emerges with a steaming mug of coffee and hands it to me. She also gets around on her own, driving, shopping, hiking with her red battery-powered wheelchair.

Just as she was losing hope to land a full-time teaching position, James Fleming, then-superintendent of Capistrano Unified School District, called. He’d heard about her struggle and guaranteed she’d have an equal chance – nothing more, nothing less.

Within months, Miller was an elementary school teacher.

Along the way, Miller discovered a local Vineyard Community Church, a fast-growing evangelical Christian movement known for its relaxed style, missions to help the poor and belief in physical healing.

She went on to help plant a church in Laguna Niguel. After a particularly powerful prayer session, Miller opened her eyes and look at her tiny legs in surprise.

They were still the same; her hip still broken, her pelvis still in the wrong place.

“I thought I was going to be healed,” Miller admits, laughing now at her conviction. “I was mad at God. I went home and wept. I asked God, ‘Why not heal me?’

But soon Miller again felt what she believes is God’s love and made one of the toughest decisions of her life.

Miller left behind the salary and benefits of a public school teacher to become the children’s pastor at Vineyard church in Laguna Niguel.